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Category Archives: Interviews

I got two phone calls early this morning. The first one was from my mother and the second was from Bernadette Peters. Love ya mom but I was a little more eager to speak with Bernadette, a Broadway legend and gay icon who is a longtime fave.

Her Broadway resume is beyond compare: “Sunday in the Park With George,” “Annie Get Your Gun” (Tony win), “Gypsy,” “Song and Dance” (Tony win), “Into the Woods” and “Mack & Mabel” among others.

Towards the end of our chat, I asked Bernadette why the gays have loved her for so much for so long.

“I always say they have great taste,” she joked. “They just recognize when something is going on, they recognize truth. Growing up feeling like an outsider, their souls and emotions are more developed. They have an ultra-sensitivity and that’s why they love show business.”

Miss Peters called to talk about her new movie, “Living Proof,” which debuts on Lifetime on Saturday. She plays a breast cancer patient involved in a breakthrough clinical trial. I’ve seen it and she is terrific in it as are Harry Connick Jr., Regina King,. Swoosie Kurtz, Jennifer Coolidge, Amanda Bynes, Amy Madigan, Tammy Blanchard and Angie Harmon.

She plays Barbara Bradfield, the first woman whose life was saved by the drug Herceptin .developed by UCLA’s Dr. Dennis Slamon. Bernadette got to meet Bradfield at the film’s premiere.

“She’s been 15 years cancer-free,” the actress said. “She’s a lovely woman, very creative and pretty. What’s not in the movie is that she also had 24 tumors in her lung and was ready to be written off. She didn’t want to do chemotherapy because she said, ‘I’m gonna die anyway and I’m not gonna die bald.’”

Slamon faced years of obsticles in getting it approved: “It’s a true story about what someone is up against, what the doctor is up against as he is trying to get something developed and approved. It’s very, very interesting to know what goes on in that situation and how it did evolve. It is saving so many lives.”

Just like in the film, the doctor really did call her a 6 o’clock in the morning the day she was to leave for Mexico.

“He said, ‘Look, I really think this can save your life’ and they decided to cancel their trip,” Peters said. “First the tumors shrunk, then disappeared and then she was cancer-free. It’s wonderful to play a character who survives and gets hers. It’s amazing. I didn’t know anything about this drug, I didn’t know it existed.

“Living Proof” is her second meaty television role in recent months with her guest spot on “Grey’s Anatomy” garnering Emmy buzz. Since she alternates between stage, televisiion and film (“The Jerk,” “Pennies From Heaven,” “It Runs In the Family”), I wondered how decides what she will do next.

“I just see what’s presented to me and I think, ‘This would be fun to do.’” she said. “I’ve been lucky because I did this and ‘Grey’s Anatomy.’ Both had wonderful writing.”

Before we hung up, Bernadette joked that she knows she sounds like Bob Barker (he would tell “Price is Right” viewers to spay and neuter their animals before signing off), but the animal activist had to offer this thought “Make (pet) adoption your first option.”

With close friend Mary Tyler Moore, she co-founded “Broadway Barks”, an annual animal adopt-a-thon held in New York City. Their goals are to promote adopting animals from shelters and to make New York City a no-kill city. To support this cause, Peters has written a children’s book titled Broadway Barks (Blue Apple Books, April 2008) and a lullaby titled “Kramer’s Song” to go with it, included on a CD in the book.

Phylicia Rashad did not win the Emmy last Sunday (she was robbed!) for her wonderful performance in the television movie “A Raisin in the Sun.” But she can be consoled by the fact that she did win the Tony Award for the stage version of “Raisin” and got to work with co-stars Sean Combs, Audra MacDonald and Sanaa Lathan again.

“We had such a good time,” she said when we chatted at a pre-Emmy party last week.. “It was a lovefest. It was the absolute best. When you’re making these films for television, you don’t really have a lot of time to make them. But because we had performed together – the four main characters – on Broadway, we knew the story very well , we knew who we were and we knew each other. So it just deepened the entire experience.”

The actress further left her television persona of Claire Huxtable of “The Cosby Show” behind with “Raisin” then a lead role in the Broadway production of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.”

“I’m really enjoying this time, I must say,” she said. “And before ‘Cat on a Hit Tin Roof’ I had my first professional Shakespeare at Lincoln Center and that was wonderful.”

What I love most about talking to Diane Keaton is her absolute inability to give a cookie-cutter answer.

We had a chat earlier this week about her new movie, “Smother,” which opened today. Since her most recent film, “Mad Money” was widely panned by critics, I wondered if she is still bothered by bad reviews after more than 35 years in movies.

“Of course. Everybody is. You can’t not,” she said. “I don’t understand the stamina of how people like Hillary Clinton. Who could take that life day after day on the road being judged, hanging in, looking forward, being on a plane every five minutes. It’s impossible to comprehend for a person like me. I would be crushed. You really have to just carry on. These politicians, I admire their stamina.”

You just gotta roll with her and keep up!

Miss Keaton, who won an Oscar for “Annie Hall” and starred on such films as “Reds,” “Something’s Gotta Give,” “First Wives Club,” and all three “Godfather” movies, has been making mostly comedies in recent years.

In “Smother” she plays the overbearing mother of a 29-year-old man who arrives at her sons house with her five dogs in need of a place to stay.

Miss Keaton describes her this way: “She’s almost a freak. She’s borderline. She’s on the edge of insantity. She needs heavy doses of medication.”

Here is the trailer just to give you and idea:

The best part was filming “Smother” in Los Angeles so the actress was still able to take her daughter, Dexter, and son, Duke, to school each morning.

“It’s not good to be away,” she said. “It’s not really a healthy situation. The nice thing about these movies is they are brief. ‘Smother’ we shot here and for no money. You can make movies and try things out. and experiment with acting and working with new and interesting people.”

Parenthood has changed everything for this single mom who famously had romances with Woody Allen, Warren Beatty and Al Pacino.

“It’s the miracle of my life of course,” she said. “Being a parent is the most extraordinary journey you are ever going to go on.”

At 62, she added to her roles of mother and movie star by being a model for Loreal Cosmetics.

“It’s a lifelong dream that came at a time in my life when it could have never been expected. And yet, when I was a teenager, I’d leaf through pages of Bazaar and Vogue with awe and I was a fan of people like Jean Shrimpton and Twiggy. I was obsessed with fashion. So it’s so bizarre that I’ve lived my life and this would happen that I’d be a spokesperson for Loreal. We want women of my generation to feel great about being a woman.”

The creator and host of Bravo’s “Inside the Actors Studio” is now just about as famous as most of the household names he has interviewed over the last 14 years and he’s loving every minute of it.

“Amazing, amazing, amazing,” he said during our red carpet chat at last weekend’s Creative Arts Emmys. “Hell, I came from another red carpet this morning at the Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. I’m in ‘Igor.’ In November, I’ll be on the red carpet for ‘Bolt” where I’m appearing. It’s an amazing time.”

What makes this 82-year-old former acting school dean’s quiet intensity and obsequious interviewing style have made him ripe for parody on such shows as “Chappelle’s Show,” “Mystery Science Theater 3000,” “The Howard Stern Show” and “The Simpsons.” Most famous is Will Farrell’s exaggerated impersonation of Lipton in sketches on “Saturday Night Live.”

Does he get the joke?

“Well, of course. Of course,” he said. “I love it.”

And being so obsequious means that few people say no to appearing on the program. It’s not like they are sitting across from the ladies on “The View.”

“I’ve had over 200 guests and not one complaint,” Lipton said. “I’ve never double-crossed anybody, I’ve never trapped anybody, no gotchas.”

His favorite guest? “How would you distinguish among them? Spielberg. Scorsese. Streisand. Robin Williams. Where do you begin and where do you end? The list goes on and on and on.”

And who would his dream guest be?

“The night that one of my graduated students has achieved so much that he or she comes out and sits down in that chair next to me, it’ll be the best show I ever had.”
I love Lipton’s very long answer, filled with facts, when I ask him if the longevity of the show has come as a surprise to him.

“If you had put a gun to my head in 1994 and said, ‘I will pull the trigger unless you predict that within three years this will be the largest graduate school in America, that the time will come when you’ll be in 89 million homes on the Bravo network in America, in 125 countries and you’ll have 14 consecutive Emmy nominations. Predict it or die.’ I would have said, ‘Pull the trigger.’”